how to get a stable version of hydrogen on your windows pc

it seems that many people want the full functionality of hydrogen on windows machines. if it is originally designed to work on linux, why not just download ubuntu linux?

a few reasons:

1. its free
2. doesn't take very much space
3. use hydrogen to its full extent

you can download ubuntu at www.ubuntu.com. i assume that you don't want to replace your windows operating system. you can install ubuntu on a flash memory device like a usb stick, sd card, or cf card. i have ubuntu installed on an 8 gb usb stick and on a 5 gb cf card.

whenever you want to boot ubuntu to use hydrogen, restart your computer and run bios setup. change the boot sequence to start with usb. (if you install ubuntu on an sd or cf card, you will have to use a usb card reader)

after changing the boot sequence, restart your computer and ubuntu will boot. once you get there, you can download and install hydrogen.

to get back to your windows operating system, you can either change the boot sequence each time (which will be a hassle) or just keep the sequence in this order: 1. usb 2. internal hdd. this way, if you disconnect all usb storage drives from your computer, your computer will skip booting from usb and proceed to boot from your 2nd choice, the internal hard drive.

it may sound difficult, but it really isnt. if you have any spare computers laying around, i would recommend dedicating one entirely to linux/ubuntu.

Hehe nice argumentation. When I'll grow up, I will make a dozen of useful applications that are targeted at linux and kind-of-work on windows, just to make people understand the pain a developer goes through when using that platform.

But I do need to spoil it a little bit:) I run a linux as my primary os, but booted into vista to be able to sing along hydrogen with my bluetooth headset. I haven't been able to set it up in linux..

I'll tell you exactly why. Even though I love running Linux, Jack, and Arduour are both unstable. There is nothing so stifling to the creative process as having to keep restarting software because it crashes every time you import and delete tracks. I'm going back to Windows and Sonar Cakewalk and I sure hope that I can get Hydrogen up and running on the evil empire operating system!